Analysis Serving Ideology

Anyone who has watched the emergence of lawfare over the past 40 years isn’t surprised by the unprincipled misuse of industrial, workplace, heritage, discrimination, FOI, international and planning laws for political purposes.

Or by the emergence of politics-by-research, as ideologically-aligned “Centres” at Universities trot out predictable tracts on demand.

But it’s getting worse. Now we have politics-by-bureaucratic-analysis, or lack thereof.

When agencies and departments like Commonwealth Treasury politicise their functions (here and here), it shows that much of the analytic activity of previously trusted institutions has been utterly compromised. Yet when you see stories like this from the US it’s clear it’s only just beginning:

[US] Environmental Protection Agency officials will spend in excess of $8 billion this year, but they will apparently do so without a working definition of “savings/cost avoidances” or a way of calculating if they’ve achieved any,” according to the agency’s Inspector-General.

“EPA does not have a policy describing what constitutes savings/cost avoidances and the methodology for calculating them,” the IG said in a new report. “Without effective policies and procedures for estimating savings and cost avoidances, EPA will not be able to accurately report the results of its efficiency initiatives and influence internal and external management decisions.”

Hey, if the analysis might stop us pursuing our agenda, we’d better not do it, right?